Tag: Children

I had resolved not to fall for the smoke screen that as been raised in the media about children being separated from their parents on the southern border, and here I am about to deal with it.

I call it a smokescreen since it’s pretty obvious that it has been raised at this time and in this way to distract attention away from the hearings going on in Congress this week over the Inspector General’s report detailing unprecedented corruption and malfeasance within the FBI, beginning with the Hillary Clinton email so-called investigation.

I’m not going to ignore that report or those hearings, but the din over the children on the border has gotten to the point where it’s virtually impossible not to deal with it, and there is so much utter nonsense and dishonesty embedded in the blather that it offends the senses of anyone even vaguely familiar with what is going on. So, despite my best intents, here I am discussing the border issue. The other, no less important, issue will have to wait for a subsequent posting. Okay, let’s get going with this.

No matter where you come down on the question of whether children should or shouldn’t be separated from their parents when the parents are apprehended for crossing the border illegally, if for even a moment you think this isn’t an orchestrated crisis, I have several hundred miles of border fence I’d like to sell you at a very good price. Neither the timing nor the volume nor the shrillness of the cries nor ferocity of chest beating and rending of garments over this latest border crisis isn’t without behind-the-scenes orchestration.

To establish where I’m coming from on this, I will cite my background as a U.S. consular officer posted to what is called a high-fraud post. That’s a post that gets a high percentage of fraudulent visa applications. It was awhile back and in a different part of the world, but I saw lots of fraud and lots of tactics used by people who would enter and stay illegally in the U.S. And much of what I saw can be applied to interpreting the current situation, including how people would use and abuse their children when their goal was entry to the U.S.

Let’s start with the issue of political asylum, since a big part of the media angst has been over children separated from parents seeking political asylum in the U.S. And let’s start with the facts and not the emotions. For a moment, let’s assume (and it’s a big assumption) that someone has bona fide grounds for seeking political asylum. According to the international standard, they should seek asylum in the first country they come to where they might find protection. In this case, for those coming from Central America, that would be Mexico. But these people are not seeking asylum in Mexico. They want to declare it in the U.S., which is a long way from the countries in which they originate.

Next thing: If you wish to declare yourself as a political asylee, you do it at a port of entry. A regular border crossing. You are showing yourself openly as having a legitimate reason why you should be admitted to the country. But most of these alleged asylum seekers are crossing the southern border illegally, like any other border jumper. Then when they’re caught by the Border Patrol they say they are seeking political asylum. Well, they can say anything they want, can’t they? If they got away with entering the country illegally and managed to make it to the hinterlands, for one moment do you think many, if any, would then apply for political asylum? I highly doubt it.

When I was at that aforementioned high-fraud post, we received a communication from someone at the State Department in Washington. They explained they weren’t supposed to do this, but thought we needed to have something brought to our attention, which was that many of the people we were issuing visitor visas to were declaring political asylum once they got to the U.S. This person in the Department also sent copies of the letters that were filed on behalf of these “asylees,” and every single one of them had been typed on the same typewriter (this was back when typewriters, which had distinctive characteristics, still roamed the earth), were all worded the same, and were all put out by the same bottom-feeder immigration attorney in San Francisco. That was bad enough, but the country we were in and from which these “asylees” hailed had then none of the conditions that would justify a claim of political asylum. Let me just say we tightened up considerably on our already tight visa-issuance consideration standard.

I think it would be naive to assume that all these people showing up across the southern border and declaring political asylum just spontaneously came there. Let’s not forget that a few years ago the Obama Administration put out word on the radio and in the newspapers in Central America telling people what they needed to do to get to the U.S. so they, too, could declare political asylum. More on that period a bit later. But clearly there is something more than just chance behind this latest wave of arrivals.

As for the question about whether children should be separated from their parents, that is one especially prone to emotional responses. Assuming the adults are the children’s parents – which not all are – personally I think it’s not a great policy and generally think it can lead to more problems than it avoids. That said, let’s not be Pollyannish about this whole thing.

One has to wonder what leads a parent to put their children through the danger of a long journey through a country like Mexico, to put them at the mercy of coyotes who exploit and abuse and rape and even kill immigrants, and in some cases to put the children up on the roof of a train for a journey of several days and nights. And then those same parents take their children across the Rio Grande or into the Arizona and New Mexico desert, and all the dangers entailed in that. These are all things that might be considered, in calmer moments, child abuse, and would have the parents charged by CPS and the children taken away from them. I mean, parents have been charged with abuse for letting their kids walk home unaccompanied from school in the suburbs, and yet there are those who would defend these egregious practices that can lead to death and serious injury for the children. What is wrong with these people?

Let me tell you another tale from my consular posting, if you have any delusions about how some parents will exploit and abuse their children to get themselves into the U.S. We handled immigrant visa applications for citizens of a neighboring country which had, at the time, the highest overstay rate in the U.S. That’s the rate at which people arrive with valid visas and then don’t leave when their stay is up.

Adults from this particular country – and I’m sure it’s not the only country in which this occurs – would get a visitor visa, go to the U.S., and stay for years until their numbers for immigrant visas came up, based on some family relation or another. At that point they would have to leave the U.S., go back to their home country, and go through a visa interview, which is where I would come in. Meanwhile, these folks would leave their children behind while they were overstaying in the U.S. to be raised by the children’s grandparents in the home country. We’re not talking a few weeks or months here. We’re talking several, even many, years, so the children who might have been infants when the parents abandoned them were pretty well grown into preteens and teens by the time their parents returned to claim them. I had no compunction against asking those children, in the visa interviews I conducted, how they felt about being abandoned like that by their parents. I can tell you, most of them weren’t too happy about it. And for their part, all the parents could do was squirm in their seats and grin stupidly. Frankly, I thought it was disgraceful, and I had no problem telling the parents that. Unfortunately, this kind of child abandonment wasn’t grounds for denying them the visas they sought.

That was bad enough. But what do you say about a parent who would subject their children to the kinds of risks that they face on the trip north to the U.S., or once they cross the border? Those opposing the Administration’s policies seem to be silent on the topic.

The numbers in the current “crisis” don’t come anywhere near the numbers of unaccompanied minors and family units that overran the southern border back in 2013, 2014, and 2015, under the Obama Administration. Currently, we’re talking about a few thousand children and families. Compare that with fiscal year 2013 when, according to U.S. Border Patrol statistics, 38,759 unaccompanied minors showed up on the southern border. Or the next fiscal year, when the number of unaccompanied minors swelled to 68,541. Meanwhile, “family unit apprehensions” numbered 14,855 in FY 2013 and 68,445 in FY 2014. Do you recall the kind of outcry then that we’re seeing now? I don’t. I do remember the images of what the detention centers looked like at that time, and I have to agree with what President Trump had to say about them.

“You look at the images from 2014,” the President said, “I was watching this morning and they were showing images from 2014 and they blow away what we’re doing today. I saw images that were horrible.”

If you watched Fox News at the time, as I did, you would have been shocked at what you saw nightly. You might not even have seen those images if you watched some of the other media. Those same media that are screaming about what is happening now.

Which leads us to the conclusion that this current outcry, along with being a smoke screen, is politically motivated. It’s one more – pardon the expression – trumped-up offense the Dems think they can pin on the President. The angst and tenor of some of the rhetoric is over the top. And then, when the President relents and signs an executive order stopping the separation of children from their parents, the Dems aren’t happy with that, either. Anything short of releasing all those who cross the border illegally into the general population, never to be seen again (and ostensibly to eventually become Democratic voters, the real goal), won’t appease them. Just keep moving the goal posts and criticizing the Administration and claiming there is nothing you can do about it by getting serious about passing meaningful immigration legislation, and you can fool at least some of the people.

Many of the anecdotes coming out of all the hysteria would be amusing, were they not so serious. A bit of levity did, however, come on the news Tuesday evening when Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Senator Bill Nelson, the valedictorian and salutatorian of Democratic hubris and grandstanding in the Sunshine State, whined about not being granted access to a youth detention center in Hialeah, Fla.

“Balderdash” – I’m not making this up – is the word Nelson actually used to describe what he had been told in being turned away. Obviously they thought they could just barge their way into the facility and then use it to make political hay. Or, more likely, they knew all along they wouldn’t be granted entry without going through the usual channels. Whatever. Are people naive enough not to see through this sort of thing? I fear they are. However else can these people get elected to office?

Then we have actor Peter Fonda (remember him? Easy Rider? What, 1969?) urging the kidnapping of the President’s young son, Barron, and placing him in a cage with pedophiles. Now if you, kind reader, or I were to make that sort of goad I can just about guarantee that we’d be paid a visit by the Secret Service or the FBI. I wonder what will happen in Fonda’s case, even with First Lady Melania Trump referring him to the Secret Service for investigation. Oh, he’s issued an apology. So sincere, I am sure. Like his calls for raping DHS Kirstjen Nielsen and other tasteless tweets that, were he not of the leftist persuasion, would bring down outrage. Instead we get the sound of crickets from that side of the political divide.

And then there was the near riot that broke out when DHS Secretary Nielsen was cornered inside a DC restaurant – it’s hard to ignore the irony of it being a Mexican restaurant, an irony not lost on those organizing the demonstration, either – by a shouting, jeering mob of Washington Democratic Socialists. So much for democratic discourse and tolerance amid the orchestrated hysteria (a call to the demonstration was put out in a series of tweets).

Finally, one can only wish that someone on the Democratic side of the aisle would call for an end to the offensive references comparing the Administration’s border policy to Nazi Germany and the round-up of U.S. citizens of Japanese decent during the Second World War. Really? Concentration camps? But that’s not going to happen, since some of those offensive references are coming literally from – surprise! – that side of the aisle.

Okay, I’ve said my piece, for now, on this subject. I can almost predict that all the frenzy will blow over as soon as the hearings on the FBI and the abuse of power that went on within it are over. We’ll get to that matter in due course. Meanwhile, don’t believe much of what you see and hear in the media maelstrom centered on the southern border which, I assure you, is more about putting up a smoke screen than anything really to do with the children.

I have been wanting to put up a guest post for some time, and finally I have one that is worth sharing. Originally posted on Medium, this piece by Gabriel Iosa precisely mirrors the things that concern me about how people are raising their children these days, exposing them to social media from birth, and substituting devices for actual communication and interaction with their kids. The result is what we are witnessing in rapidly growing trends among young people of de-personalization, alienation, depression, suicide, violence, and other social and mental ailments. You can visit the author’s web site at www.gabrieliosa.com.

Complete lack of privacy, iPad addiction and mental struggles from an early age are the ingredients of a hard adult life

The online life of the new generation starts early, way before the actual life of the newborn begins. Pictures of the mother and her big belly, wandering around in a forest or at the hospital, waiting for her son or daughter to come out into the world are spread online on Facebook and Instagram like wildfire. Even the moment of birth is captured on camera, from the womb all the way out into the hospital delivery room.

The minute they come out of their moms, newborn babies are online. Their first picture on Facebook is live in about 60 minutes after birth. The baby is not even considered a legal person yet, has no legal name and all of the gist, but he or she is already on social media, getting likes and comments from people that care little about them, but consider it to be the social norm to felicitate the parents for their achievement and for the fact that they posted the whole thing online. And fast!

“Pictures of newborns appear online within an hour of birth. Of the parents surveyed, the average time it took to share their newborns’ first photo on a social media site was 57.9 minutes. They surveyed 2,367 parents of kids 5 and under. Seventy-seven percent of baby photos appear on the parents’ Facebook page, with Instagram trailing behind at 48 percent” — Huffington Post

Between 3 to 14 days later, they have their first professional photo shoot. I’m not talking phone cameras and a toy that the mom dangles in front of him and then the baby laughs and gets photographed for the family album. I’m talking two photographers, costume changes, sets, scenes, lights and so on. The whole thing lasts for hours and the results are immediately posted on the internet, with parents having no clues about the consequences.

Their first walk, which was once a private, emotional and unforgettable moment, sometimes captured on an old camera that barely worked is now rather transmitted live on Facebook or Instagram, or simply recorded and then posted online, losing its spiritual, private values but being available online immediately for everyone to see and like, for some reason.

For the first birthday of the child, the whole thing goes off the charts. Photographers, camera guys, drones, a huge buffet and even live bands celebrate the event in front of friends and family, and the whole thing is posted on Facebook as it happens.

The first bath of the baby, the first burp, the first caroling, first haircut, the first trip to the store and the first laugh crisis, they’re all posted online by the parents, some hoping that they’ll go viral probably, as if the only reason for that baby being alive is to gather as many likes and shares and comments as humanly possible.

But it doesn’t end here. No, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Not only that kid has absolutely no privacy, probably the hardest thing to get as a kid or a person in today’s world, from the second he takes his first breath onwards, but he gets his own Facebook or Instagram account, with his own smartphone or tablet at age 2 or 3. That’s when I started walking, and now kids that age are already developing an addiction to games and social media, as they see their parents are doing. There’s even a Messenger for Kids app now.

“ I opened my eyes to find our three-year-old, William, standing at the bedside table in his pyjamas. He pulled the duvet, to make sure I was awake, then grabbed my hand.

‘Daddy,’ he announced, with a sense of urgency in his little voice. ‘I need the iPad.’

I checked my watch, stumbled to my feet, and marched him back to his room.

‘You don’t need the iPad,’ I told William, tucking him back into bed. ‘You need to lie down and go to sleep. It’s the middle of the night.’

At 7am, my alarm clock rang. Getting out of bed, I noticed something amiss: the white iPad, which I had left to charge overnight on the sofa next to our bed, had vanished.

I walked to the sitting room. There sat William, cross-legged on the floor, with the stolen device in his hands. He was playing a noisy video game called Peppa Pig’s Puddle Jump. The battery was already half empty, suggesting he’d been using it for at least two hours” — Daily Mail

By age 4, they’re spending hours upon hours in front of a huge, LED screen TV watching brainwashing Youtube videos generated by an algorithm, singing along and “learning” about the alphabet and colours from monstrous-looking creatures that hop around and dance on rhythmic music. It looks cute, the scene is “Facebook material”, but in reality, it’s life-altering.

“These videos, wherever they are made, however they come to be made, and whatever their conscious intention (i.e. to accumulate ad revenue) are feeding upon a system which was consciously intended to show videos to children for profit. The unconsciously-generated, emergent outcomes of that are all over the place. To expose children to this content is abuse.

We’re not talking about the debatable but undoubtedly real effects of film or videogame violence on teenagers, or the effects of pornography or extreme images on young minds, which were alluded to in my opening description of my own teenage internet use. Those are important debates, but they’re not what is being discussed here.

What we’re talking about is very young children, effectively from birth, being deliberately targeted with content which will traumatise and disturb them, via networks which are extremely vulnerable to exactly this form of abuse. It’s not about trolls, but about a kind of violence inherent in the combination of digital systems and capitalist incentives. It’s down to that level of the metal” — Medium

By age 7, the child has his first dizziness crisis, the first heart palpitations and the first panic attacks. You read that right, more and more toddlers have severe anxiety disorders because they’re never going out, never playing on the playground and never having normal social interactions, but just staying indoors with an iPad and a PlayStation controller hooked around their arms.

“While that result set might not be surprising in the teen search rankings, it’s interesting to note that “porn” ranks fourth in the “seven and under” category, receiving more searches than “Club Penguin” and “Webkinz.” Meanwhile, “sex” is fourth for teens and tweens alike. Facebook, YouTube and Google take the other top spots.

The data was compiled from 14.6 million searches made using Symantec’s OnlineFamily.Norton, which lets parents track their kids’ online activity. And while Symantec is almost certainly hoping to sell more software as a result, it’s also a timely reminder that kids are growing up fast these days” — Mashable

Comes age 10, and the kid is already searching online for porn and sex, and by age 12, he’s most likely had it’s first intimate contact, regardless of its form. By age 14, most children have already lost their virginity and are in their second or third intimate relationship. Their lives are all online, with great moments, love deceptions, depression episodes and everything else posted on Facebook as they happened.

When finally reaching the supposed maturity at ages 16 to 18, the children are suffering from a disorder in the anxiety, depression or phobias sector. There’s no privacy for them, there are no social connections that are stable and valued enough, but just internet and more internet, Facebook and more Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat and Netflix and so on. Instead of being out and getting their heart broken in the real world, kids are so sensitive that even an SMS text can drive them into suicide.

“Messages that are delivered electronically are very powerful,” said Barbara Greenberg, a teen, adolescent and child psychologist. “Kids aren’t aware of how powerful their messages are and how their messages might impact others.”

Key issues that trip up texting teens include expecting their messages not to be seen by other friends, parents and potentially the police; misinterpreting the tone of messages; and navigating peer pressure and other coming-of-age hurdles, experts told journalists” — CNN

Parents are doing parenting wrong. Some of them even go way too far with posting everything that they do on Facebook (WARNING: Disturbing Content) and it takes a lot of time even for Facebook to stop the spreading of some of the acts that are unspeakable but are still posted online.

There’s no doubt about it that putting the entire life of the child online from the moment of birth all the way into toddlery, and then letting the kid himself do it afterwards and continue using technology from an early age into teenagery is causing the now adult, 18-year-old or older person a series of problems that take years or even a lifetime to cure. Some of them are unfortunately life-lasting, and there’s nothing parents can do about them.

The only way from stopping the new generation from becoming the Facebook addicted, anxious and depressive, medicated population of tomorrow, which is happening as we speak, is by stopping doing parenting in the wrongest way possible. No more newborn photos online. No more Facebook Live’s.

No more iPads and video game consoles for toddlers. No more weird cartoons. No more expensive laptops for 12-year-old kids. No more total freedom for them to go and use the internet whenever they want, as much as they want and how they want.

Do some “bad” now, but think of the better good. Enjoy your healthy kid and see him grow as a normal person, not a privacy-deprived, mentally exhausted, brainwashed and scared teenager who, turning into adulthood, has no taste of the real world, but only for the virtual one, which provides him with no food, no clothes, no money for rent, no human contact and no mental stability.

Bringing a baby into the world is the most beautiful gift any two people can receive in life. But if you’re not sure that you’ll be able to dedicate your time and effort into raising that kid well, know how to do it and be financially and mentally capable of doing it, just don’t! Use a condom. You are the one who should raise your kid, not Facebook, not video games or cartoons and definitely not medical professionals.